HAMAMATSU, Japan – Nov. 30, 2015 - Elysium, a leading provider of 3D translation and geometry optimization technology, announces that a new release of CADdoctor, EX7, is available today. CADdoctor is a superior-performing 3D data translation and utilization tool that is highly regarded in the CAD/CAE industry, and well-known for its robust results and excellent quality.

With the growing global desire for a shorter product lifecycle, the manufacturing world is faced with the challenge of shortening the lead-time in the manufacturing process. Conducting virtual simulations is one of the key factors in facing this challenge, and it has sprung the rapid growth of utilizing CAE tools, even in the early design stages. Elysium has significantly enhanced its Geometry Simplification and Reverse Engineering functionality within CADdoctor EX7 to make these CAE tools even more effective.

“Since its release, CADdoctor has been chosen by many companies for its powerful and robust translation capability between multiple CAD formats. It’s contributed to the streamlining of the manufacturing process, as well as the CAE and mold designing processes by adding Geometry Simplification, Mid-surface Generation, Manufacturing Checks, and so forth, to meet past demands,” stated Kentaro Fukuta, general manager of Global Business at Elysium. “As the utilization of CAD data throughout the manufacturing process has grown, we have developed functions to support efficient CAE analysis.”

One of the major enhancements of CADdoctor EX7 is to the Solid Enveloping functionality. Elysium has improved the capability to detect gaps between parts, and fill them automatically. This significantly improves the accuracy of enveloping assembly models, as well as allowing for the added feature of extracting the interior outline. Fluid analysis can take an incredible amount of manual work to prepare data for CAE analysis because of the large amount of clearance gaps. With this enhanced Solid Envelope functionality, the geometry of the interior space can instantly be extracted from the design CAD data, saving days of data preparation. The time to simulate the gas flow and temperature distribution within a car exhaust system, for example, is significantly reduced by the automatic extraction of the interior geometry of a muffler.

The protection of IP (intellectual property) has become another common use of the Solid Envelope function as more and more companies increase data exchange with other companies, often across the globe. “Data sharing is an absolute requirement amongst the manufacturing supply chain. The issue remaining within these data sharing scenarios is that accuracy must be a given, however, the protection of Intellectual Property plays a tremendous role as the global supply chain now faces data breach and of course plagiarism. CADdoctor aims to address these manufacturing and security requirements with its advanced enveloping functionality and key features which allow for invisible component removal, high performance enveloping, and interior space extraction,” states Ken Tashiro, COO of Elysium Inc. “In addition, we have increased our performance in handling very large models, often encountered in the automotive and aerospace industries, to provide very accurate yet lighter-sized models with IP removed.”

The Reverse Engineering functionality in CADdoctor EX7 has also been enhanced to generate a high-quality B-rep from polygons created in CAE tools. This enables B-rep generation from deformed polygons, for example, results of flow analysis to simulate the stretching of plastic parts during the mold process, and then conduct interference checking against neighboring parts.

Overview of CADdoctor EX7 Enhancement

1. Enveloping

CADdoctor recognizes and fills gaps in a large or complex assembly automatically by improved Boolean operations and other advanced technologies.

Advanced gap filling

CADdoctor merges assembly models into a single solid model, and extracts the outline of the exterior parts in preparation for efficient fluid analysis.

Enveloping large complex assembly models

CADdoctor also extracts the outline of interior parts of assembly models and automatically creates a CAD model that can be used instantly in CAE analysis to simulate the flow of gas and fluid inside the product.

Extracting the outline of inner void and creating a new CAD model

CADdoctor now merges multiple volumes, including both sheet volumes and solid volumes, and can create a single solid model. This offers a substantial advantage for manufacturing companies as they can now start CAE analysis much earlier, where they were challenged in the past with multiple volumes from bosses and ribs during early design stages.

Merging solid volumes and sheet volumes into a single solid model

2. Reverse Engineering

The Reverse Engineering module has been enhanced to generate B-reps from polygon data created in CAE tools for structural analysis and strength analysis.